And Change Their State
by AstroGirl
Summary: The world is ending. The Doctor drinks tea. An AU set after 'The Parting of the Ways.' It draws fairly heavily on the classic series and the TV movie for background, but should be fairly accessible to new fans, anyway.


**And Change Their State  
by AstroGirl**

The Doctor sits by the window in Rose's flat and sips his tea. Off in the kitchen, he can hear Rose and her mother arguing about what to have for supper, voices rising and falling in tones of loving exasperation. In his previous incarnation, he probably would have hated it. So... _domestic_. But he's quite capable of admitting now that his former self protested far too much, and the newer him finds it oddly comforting.

He smiles slightly as he looks out of the window. The sun is shining; a rare beautiful day in the middle of an English winter. He's glad. If it all has to end -- and it does -- it seems right, somehow, that it happen on a nice day, at least for this tiny corner of the globe.

It won't be long now. Sometime before sunset, he's certain. The signs are multiplying rapidly. A pigeon flying by the window, its wings moving in ways that don't quite obey the normal laws of aerodynamics. A finger dipped into his teacup and removed only with difficulty, as if surface tension has briefly increased a thousand-fold. Local gravitational fluctuations, tiny shifts in the behavior of matter. Subtle effects, easily dismissed unless you know what to look for, and he's the only one who does. He hasn't told the humans. Let them spend their last hours having good-natured arguments, enjoying the sunlight, drinking tea. It's more than he was able to give his people.

Besides, he _can't_ tell Rose, even if part of him would very much like to take her hand and meet the end together when it comes. What is he supposed to say? "It's a funny thing, Rose. You saving the Earth in 200,100, it had this tiny little side effect of destroying it in 2006. All those futures we saw together? Out of the picture now, I'm afraid. Bad luck." He can't do that to her, can't burden her with that kind of guilt. It'd destroy her metaphorically before it happened literally.

It's his fault, anyway, not hers. The chain of events is so obvious in hindsight. First there was Gallifrey, of course. He thinks he's made his peace with that, actually, surprising as he finds the fact. He's capable of thinking about it now without wondering what else he could have done. It needed to happen, and even knowing everything he knows, he thinks he'd do it again. Still, it was _his_ doing. He destroyed Gallifrey, then he refused to destroy the human race, and he sent Rose away to keep her safe, and oh, yes, the whole thing is _full_ of nasty little ironies.

He should have realized what the consequences would be -- these specific consequences, that is, apart from all the others. He'd fallen into the habit of thinking of himself as something entirely separate from Gallifrey, entirely independent, but it never has been true. He's depended on his TARDIS, and the TARDIS's heart has never been hers alone. It is tied into the Eye of Harmony, the Time Lord's ancient power source: a once-captive black hole modified by technologies so old and so cryptic that even the Time Lords had forgotten them. And the Eye is tied into... nothing. Not any more. It's free of all constraint now, beyond all control. And they've opened a conduit to that untamed power, he and the TARDIS and Rose. They've opened a doorway that no remaining power in the universe can shut, and the _real_ Bad Wolf is about to emerge and eat them all.

And there's reason number two not to tell Rose what's happening. (Or is it number three? He's lost count.) She would insist there must be a solution, that they should try this, try that, try everything. That he's the Doctor and he ought to be able to _do_ something. But he already _has_ tried everything, and his hat is all out of rabbits. There is no technological solution; grafting on bits of atomic clock won't do it this time. Convincing the TARDIS to self-destruct, if he could manage it, would only speed up the end. He can't even dematerialize it, send it somewhere else, let it destroy some uninhabited region of space instead of this lovely little planet. The damage is too far advanced. The TARDIS is never going anywhere again. And neither is he.

It's funny. He was tied down to Earth once before, and he'd spent nearly every moment of his exile chafing against the confinement and trying to find a way off. But since the War, for all his grand talk to Rose about adventuring across Time and Space, he hasn't ever wanted to leave it behind for long. Somewhere along the way, it's become a kind of home to him, more than Gallifrey, as much as the TARDIS. And now it, too, is dying because of him.

He's a little surprised at how well he's taking it. Still, his hand trembles a bit on the teacup, and for a moment he imagines himself leaping to his feet, dashing the cup across the room, lifting his face to shout in rage and defiance at the universe. It's worked for him before: a refusal to accept defeat as the first step towards victory. And yet... Well, as his old friend Freud might have said, sometimes a defeat is just a defeat. It's taken him nine hundred years, but he's finally learned the truth of that. And he has known for a very long time that everything in the universe is fragile and transitory. It's time now, perhaps, to accept that that's true not only of everything he loves, but also of himself.

He doesn't rise from his chair, but instead raises the cup slowly and deliberately to his lips and takes another sip. Call it pride, or a desire for the illusion of control over the inevitable, but if this is truly the end, he's decided to face it with a little dignity. A little smile. A little "Hello, Death, old friend. Good to see you! How've you been?" He's never thought of himself as a victim, and he's not about to start now. Even Hobson had a choice, after all, so he's making his. He chooses to drink tea in the face of death.

And death is coming, faster than he'd thought. He can hear the cloister bell ringing in his mind, its tempo speeding up until one mournful peal resonates directly into the next. He revises his time estimate sharply downward. Not hours left, he thinks, but minutes. At most.

His poor, dear TARDIS. Part of him feels as bad about her loss as about Earth's. He's not proud of the fact, but still... She's been his home, his friend, his freedom, and he can't help feeling as if he's let her down. He briefly considers walking down the street to where she's parked to spend his final moments in her console room, however twisted with space-time distortion it's become by now. But it isn't really necessary. They _are_ together. In a sense, they always are. _It's all right, old girl,_ he thinks at her. _I'm here. We'll go together. We've had a good run, you and I, but we've outlived our civilization, and maybe our welcome. I suppose it's probably time._ A Type 40 isn't supposed to have telepathic circuits sophisticated enough to process communication this specific, but he has faith that she understands him, anyway, and he's convinced that he feels a comforting mental touch in return.

Soon. It will be very soon. He closes his eyes and opens his other senses, taking in the smooth warmth of the ceramic cup in his hand, the rough feel of chair's upholstery beneath him, the thin sunlight shining on his face, the rise and fall of the voices of people he cares about -- yes, even Jackie -- coming from the next room. This, too, is living, this quiet, comfortable existence he's never really known. It feels strangely like a homecoming. A completion. He is part of this universe he's always loved, part of the natural cycle of sentient life. And he isn't alone. This is how it is. Everybody lives.

And everything dies.


End file.
